Re: Case for case-sensitivity (Was: Three simple questions)

[nickerson@pundit.ds.boeing.com ()]

In article <D4BEB678D89A64A9.0BF2E74EC8861347.89ADE1DE3BC27E76@lp.airnews.net>, 
Frank Christiny <fchris@pdq.net> writes:

|>> >
|>> >    In the Company of my friend.       In the company of my friend.
|>> >    Ada presentation today.            ADA presentation today.
|>> >    Standing by the Bank.              Standing by the bank.
..
|>      The point was to emphasize that for a human parser, the
|>   sentences are different.  Even without the context they are very
|>   different.  (The river could hardly be expected to have a Bank,
|>   unless it's the "Left Bank" of course).  The same is true in a
|>   case-sensitive language.  You can do "lazy" stuff like that there,
|>   such as I mentioned earlier; and, without regard for the context.

yes, we have human parsers and computer parsers; that is the real 
point I believe; humans do better with this kind of context than 
computers do; consider complexity however; the fact is that humans 
also do a poor job at times, get confused, and get overwhelmed 
by complexity that would never faze a computer; confusion while 
programming is a very bad thing; so we simplify and wipe out an 
annoying set of errors by going with a case-insensitve language;

meaningful names aside, how clever would it be to use as my variables 
the 5 character, all {a,A}; that gives me 2**5=32 choices which is
plenty for local variables {aaaaa,aaaaA,aaaAa,aaaAA, ..., AAAAA};
horrid cleverness perhaps for a person and trivial for the machine; 

previous points on valuing the reader over the writer are also well 
taken; (aside: if we're so good parsing then why are there so many 
Usenet misunderstandings and why did emoticons get invented;)

|>      Sure, but you missed the point again.  The language does look
|>   confusing to a case-sensitive newcomer.  I guess the same happens
|>   going the other way around.  In any case, thanks to all of you
|>   guys' input I've begun to see the rationale behind
|>   case-insensitivity and, most of all, I recognize it seems to work.
|>   It shows to what extent Adaites would go to avert preventable
|>   errors.  Now, all I need to do is get used to it...
|>-- 
|>Frank Christiny                       fchris@pdq.net
|>Sr. Software Engineer                 Lockheed Martin Space Operations
|>Houston, Texas, USA                   http://freeweb.pdq.net/fchris/

each language does take some getting used to; I used FORTRAN and
PL/I and had never considered case sensitivity before being exposed
to C on the VAX; the first time I got bitten with i /= I amazed 
naive me; but then it takes a while to believe that it's ok to program 
in lower case RATHER THAN EVERYTHING BUT PRINTED "Error Messages" IN 
UPPER CASE; (which humorously brings me back to emoticons - nowdays 
this is always derided as shouting rather than being a STYLE);

--bn (Bart Nickerson)
nickerson@pundit.ds.boeing.com
(206) 662-0183